Film breaks new ground on sex in India...

Film breaks new ground on sex in India Reuters By Shilpa Jamkhandikar

Fri, Mar 25 2010 MUMBAI (Reuters) - A new Bollywood film has put the spotlight on changing sexual mores in small-town India, unsettling conservative filmgoers with spy cam footage and pushing the limits of the country's censorship board.

"Love Sex aur Dhokha" (Love Sex and Betrayal) is the latest in a series of avant-garde offerings stripping the Indian film industry of decades of inhibition and dramatically changing the traditional formula of song-and-dance romances and violent revenge sagas.

The film, which opened in Indian cinemas last week with an adults-only rating, has courted controversy with blurred visuals of a naked woman and voyeuristic sequences in its trailers.

Director Dibakar Banerjee says "Love Sex aur Dhokha" is more about a change in attitudes than it is about sex.

He says the film explores the lack of privacy in the modern world -- one where even mobile phones can capture, and broadcast, intimate moments.

"What my camera is doing is that it's recording a story that is changing in front of the camera," says Banerjee. "Earlier, sex used to be behind closed doors but now that is changing."

A decade ago, when a coy couple were about to kiss on screen, the camera would glide to two flowers brushing against each other or birds pecking at each other's beaks. Indian audiences just assumed the couple had done the deed.

In that sense, Banerjee's film, with a bunch of unknown actors, broke new ground with an extended sex scene which didn't quite escape the censor board's scissors.

But it's the director's use of unconventional cameras -- spy cams, handycams, supermarket security cameras and even underwater ones -- that seems to have won over the critics and drawn comparisons with Hollywood blockbusters "Paranormal Activity" and "The Blair Witch Project."

The story is told from the point of view of the camera, making it almost a character in a plot that interweaves three storylines -- a student who falls in love with his film's lead actress, a shop manager who traps an employee in an infamous MMS scandal and a sting operation on a rock star.

"The film effectively exposes the fat, sexual underbelly that sags out of the middles of this disturbingly prejudiced middle India," critic Mayank Shekhar wrote in the Hindustan Times.

Although critics agree "Love Sex aur Dhokha" marks a big leap for conservative India, it might take more than a few films to change mindsets.

When director Banerjee spoke to his mother about the project, she didn't repeat the name of the film because she didn't want to use the word 'sex'.

(Writing by Tony Tharakan, Editing by Miral Fahmy

Nursing home abuse 'horrifying', Roxon | Politics | BigPond News

Australia BigPond News

Sunday, March 28, 2010. Australian Federal minister for health,Nicola Roxon says, a report that reveals nursing home assaults increased by 50% in 12 mths, is 'horrifying'.

A report that reveals nursing home assaults increased by 50 per cent in 12 months and sexual assaults jumped 36 per cent is 'horrifying', federal Health Minister Minister Nicola Roxon says.

The Department of Health and Ageing was notified of 1411 alleged assaults in nursing homes in 2008/09, according to a report tabled in parliament last year.

Of those, 1121 involved alleged unreasonable force, 272 involved alleged unlawful sexual contact and 18 involved both.

Ms Roxon says the report and weekend newspaper stories about it, are alarming.

'I think this is a horrifying report,' she told ABC TV.

But the Rudd government had been taking 'a lot of action' to turn around the crisis in aged care, the health minister said.

'The spot checks that we do in aged care ... have increased seven-fold in the time that we have been in government.

'We are worried about these sorts of instances.'

Ms Roxon said over time changes made to compliance and accreditation regimes would make a difference.

'I'm not denying this is a serious problem.

'(But) we are investing a lot more in aged care to make sure that proper care is taken of our very frail and elderly citizens.'

Federal Labor has been heavily criticised for not revealing its plans for aged care when announcing its $50 billion national health and hospitals network reform agenda earlier this month.

However, Ms Roxon said on Sunday changing the funding arrangements of the whole health system would lead to better outcomes for nursing home residents.

'If we don't reform the financing and governance arrangements ... we'll actually never invest in those other innovative models,' she said.

'Because you'll have the states with hospitals and us with aged care, and never the twain shall meet.'

Federal Labor had already invested in transitional care to help the aged leave hospital, Ms Roxon said.

'We've already got, I think, 700 of those places online (and) we're building 2000.'

Airport worker warned in scanner ogling claim...

Reuters

LONDON Wed Mar 24, 2010. UK airport worker warned in scanner ogling claim.

A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a RapiScan full-body scanner, being trialled by Manchester Airport, during a photocall at the airport, in Manchester, northern England January 7, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Phil Noble

LONDON (Reuters)Wed Mar 24, 2010. - A security worker at London's Heathrow Airport has received a police warning and faces disciplinary action over claims he ogled a female colleague using a full-body scanner, officials said on Wednesday.

The 25-year-old worker made lewd comments after his colleague Jo Margetson, 29, mistakenly strayed into the scanner, which can see through clothes to produce an image of the body, the Sun newspaper reported.

The case is believed to be the first of its kind since the full-body scanners were rushed into service at a number of British airports in the wake of an attempt by a suspected Muslim extremist to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on December 25.

They are now being rolled out at airports across the world.

Details of the incident at Heathrow's Terminal 5 on March 10 emerged on the day lawmakers said concerns that the scanners were intrusive had been overblown.

Margetson told the Sun she had been "traumatized" by what had happened and had informed police and her bosses at the airport's operator BAA.

"We treat any allegations of inappropriate behavior or misuse of security equipment very seriously and these claims are being investigated thoroughly," said a spokeswoman for BAA.

"If found to be substantiated, we will take appropriate action."

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said officers had been informed of the allegation and "a first instance harassment warning has been issued to a 25-year-old man."

Opponents of scanners have argued since their introduction that they risked breaching individuals' rights to privacy. Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission has already said they might be breaking discrimination and privacy laws.

"For every official caught ogling like this, there are plenty more eyeing up law-abiding travelers," Alex Deane, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, told the Sun.

"These expensive machines are totally disproportionate."

The government says staff using the machines are properly supervised and would not be able to see the person being scanned. All images are deleted.

Britain's parliamentary Home Affairs Committee said fears about the scanners were misplaced and they should be introduced at a faster pace to deal with the threat of terrorism.

"The Committee is satisfied that the privacy concerns that have been expressed in relation to these devices are overstated and ... should not prevent the deployment of scanners," it said in a report.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)

Woman arrested for setting hitmen on her father...

Reuters By Ella Ide

Tue, Mar 23 2010 ROME (Reuters) - An Italian woman who hired two assassins to murder her overbearing father was arrested after the second hitman changed his mind and confessed to the police, authorities said Tuesday.

Nineteen-year-old Ilenia Moretti had asked her father Rodolfo for 5,000 euros ($6,756) for a trip to America before using the money to hire a hitman to kill him, apparently with her mother's consent, a police statement said.

The teen-ager, from the small town of Luzzara near the northern Italian city of Milan, told authorities she could no longer bear her despotic father's ways.

"She said she wanted to bring to an end years of intimidation suffered by both daughter and mother," an investigator said in the statement.

The hitman, thought to be a young north African, pocketed the money before going to the police. His confession led police to re-examine details of a previous attack on Rodolfo Moretti, a 42-year-old porter.

In January, Ilenia and 26-year-old accomplice Davide Giorgi had recruited Alex Grantana from the nearby town of Mantova to murder Rodolfo. Giorgi has also been detained.

Grantana, 22, cycled 30 km (19 miles) from Mantova to Luzzara in the middle of the night to wait in the shadows outside the Moretti home for Rodolfo to appear. The victim was on his way to work at 1:30 am when Grantana leaped out and stabbed him in the back.

Rodolfo managed to quickly overpower his aggressor, however, and restrained him until the police arrived.

When asked why he had attacked Rodolfo, Grantana said he just didn't like him, an explanation that confused police as the victim and aggressor had never seen each other before.

Ilenia, who had told father she had left for America, was discovered hiding in a nearby house. Her mother Roberta is under investigation for her possible role in the attempted murders.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Library book is returned -- 45 years late...

Reuters

Fri Mar 19, 2010. LONDON (Reuters) - Staff at the Dinnington library are used to people bringing books back late but the package they received last month was in a class of its own.

It contained a paperback first edition copy of "Quatermass and the Pit" by Nigel Kneale which had been borrowed on September 24, 1965.

"I thought at first it was just a normal return, until I saw the color of the pages: they were very brown around the edges," said Alison Lawrie, the Principal Library Assistant.

"It's true that some people like to take their time with a good book, but 45 years is an incredible amount of time!"

Staff believe the book was borrowed from the old Dinnington Library, in Sheffield, South Yorkshire which opened in 1936 and is close to the current building which opened in 2000.

However, the identity of the borrower remains a mystery because records do not go back that far -- and there would have been no danger of a huge accumulated fine because all fines are capped at 6 pounds ($9).

"The person who posted it back to us would not be in any 'trouble' whatsoever," said Lawrie. "If the person who returned the book wants to come forward, we'd love to know the story behind it."

(Reporting by Valle Aviles Pinedo; Editing by Steve Addison)

Melanoma survivors at higher risk of other cancers...

Reuters Credit: David Gray

<---Melanoma survivors at higher risk of other cancers. By Rachael Meyers Love

Tue Mar 16, 2010 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Melanoma survivors are at increased risk of other cancers as well as the return of their skin cancers, according to a new study, leading National Cancer Institute researchers to urge lifelong follow-up of such survivors.

The study included data from more than 89,500 patients collected from 1973 to 2006. There were 12,559 subsequent cancers, including 3,094 melanomas.

While not the most common form of skin cancer, melanoma is the most serious and most likely to be fatal. The American Cancer Society estimates that 68,720 Americans were diagnosed in 2009 with melanoma and that 6,850 Americans died from the disease.

Noting that most people with melanoma - more than 92 percent of white women, and nearly 87 percent of white men - survive at least 5 years after diagnosis, Dr. Portia T. Bradford and colleagues wanted to measure the risks of the disease coming back or of survivors developing a second melanoma or another type of cancer.

"The risk of subsequent cancer is important for melanoma survivors," they write in the March issue of the Archives of Dermatology.

Analyzing data collected by the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program, they concluded that survivors had a 28 percent increased risk of a second cancer, mostly due to their 9-times greater likelihood of developing another melanoma than the general population. The most common second cancers after melanoma were breast, prostate, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Over the span of the study, doctors diagnosed 1,156 female breast cancers, 2,200 prostate cancers and 481 non-Hodgkin's lymphomas among the more than 89,000 melanoma survivors. In each case, the number of secondary cancers reported among survivors was higher than what would have been expected in the general population.

The risks of a second cancer were highest within the first year and declined somewhat over time but "remained quite elevated more than 20 years" after the first diagnosis.

Despite high survival rates for melanoma, there's no international consensus on how melanoma survivors should be followed-up.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of 21 cancer centers and a respected authority on cancer practice guidelines, acknowledges that there's a wide variety of opinions about what a melanoma survivor follow-up program should look like - how long and how often survivors should be screened.

Because of the costs involved and the lack of clear data, "the optimal duration of follow-up remains controversial," they write in the 2010 version of the NCCN's melanoma practice guidelines.

Guidelines recommend exams more than once a year for anywhere from two to ten years, but they are often vague on what to do after that time. The NCCN recommends lifelong follow-up, but their guidelines are currently under review.

Dr. Bradford says the evidence is building for longer follow-up. "Our study adds to the scientific literature on melanoma, and provides further evidence for lifelong medical surveillance of patients who have been diagnosed with melanoma for new melanomas and other cancers," she wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

SOURCE: Archives of Dermatology, March 2010.

Airline crew face jail over sexy texts...

Reuters

Wed, Mar 17. 2010. DUBAI (Reuters) - Two Emirates airlines cabin crew have been ordered jailed for three months in Dubai over sexually explicit text messages, the latest in a string of indecency cases against foreigners, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The pair, an Indian flight attendant and her cabin services supervisor, were convicted of "coercion to commit sin" over the messages and initially sentenced to six months in jail, The National newspaper said on its website, citing court documents.

The sentence was reduced on appeal last week to three months and deportation orders against the pair were lifted, it added. It did not reveal the content of the messages.

Dubai's foreign population has expanded rapidly in recent years as expatriates flocked to the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub for its tax-free earnings and year-round sunshine.

The changes have challenged the Emirati population, which is now vastly outnumbered by foreigners, raising concern that their emirate's rapid pace of growth is a threat to their social and religious identity in what remains a deeply conservative region.

An Emirates spokeswoman declined to comment on the case as it was still ongoing.

The paper said the case emerged after the flight attendant's husband filed a lawsuit against his wife a year ago accusing her of being in an illicit relationship with her supervisor. It said the couple had been embroiled in a divorce battle since 2007.

The case is the latest decency case against foreigners accused of not respecting local mores.

In a separate case, a British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai is appealing a month-long jail sentence handed down after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

The pair, a British man living in Dubai and a female friend, were arrested in November on accusations of kissing and touching each other intimately in public and consuming alcohol, their lawyer said. They were ordered jailed for a month.

In a high-profile case in 2008, a British couple narrowly escaped jail after a court found them guilty of engaging in drunken sexual activity out of wedlock, and for doing so in public on a beach in the emirate.

They were sentenced to three months in prison followed by deportation, but had their jail terms overturned on appeal.

In a separate case this year, a British couple who shared a hotel room managed to escape trial in Dubai for having sex out of wedlock by producing a marriage certificate.

(Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Brain scans show signs of early Alzheimer's: study...

Reuters By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO. Mon Mar 15, 2010 CHICAGO (Reuters) - People with a family history of Alzheimer's disease often have clumps of a toxic protein in their brains even though they are perfectly healthy, researchers said on Monday.

Health

They said the findings could lead to new ways to identify people most likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, when there is still time to do something about it.

"The hope is to one day be able to diagnose very clearly the Alzheimer's disease process before any symptoms occur, when the brain is still healthy. Then the treatments would have the best chance of success," said Lisa Moscone of New York University Langone Medical Center, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team wants to continue to follow the people in the study to see whether they develop dementia, and they want to replicate the findings in a much larger study.

Several teams have been working on better ways to detect early-stage Alzheimer's disease in hopes of developing drugs that can fight it before it causes too much damage.

Current treatments cannot reverse the course of Alzheimer's, a mind-robbing form of dementia that affects more than 26 million people globally.

Moscone's team used an imaging technique called positron emission tomography or PET with a fluorescent dye called Pittsburgh Compound B that lights up clumps of a protein called beta amyloid that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.

The team imaged the brains of 42 people with an average age of 65, all with healthy brain function. Of these, 14 people had mothers who had Alzheimer's; 14 had fathers with the disease; and 14 had parents with healthy brain function.

Brain scans of all 42 showed that those whose parents -- either fathers or mothers -- had Alzheimer's were more likely to have amyloid plaques in their brains.

This was especially true of people whose mothers had Alzheimer's.

"They have pretty much 20 percent more amyloid beta deposits in their brains. In other words, they had an almost four times greater risk for amyloid beta pathology," Moscone said in a telephone interview.

The finding confirms other studies that suggest having a mother with Alzheimer's may be a greater risk factor.

"It looks like if you have maternal history of Alzheimer's disease, the risk of amyloid beta plaque and a reduction in brain activity is much greater as compared to having a father affected," Moscone said.

After advanced age, a family history of Alzheimer's is the single biggest risk factor for developing the disease.

Not everyone who has beta amyloid plaques in their brain develops Alzheimer's disease, but Moscone said having the plaques does increase the risk.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Female porn director swaps sex for British politics...

Reuters

Mon Mar 15, 2010. BIRMINGHAM, England (Reuters) - A woman who has directed 300 "female-friendly" sex films is to test the liberal-mindedness of British voters and run for parliament in an election due within weeks.

Anna Arrowsmith, 38, whose works under the name Anna Span include "Be My Toy Boy," "Hoxton Honey" and "Uniform Behavior," is standing for the opposition Liberal Democrats in the Kent constituency of Gravesham in southeast England.

Her last-minute selection for the seat after the previous candidate dropped out made headlines across Britain over the weekend as the opposition party met in the midlands city of Birmingham ahead of the election expected in May.
Even the normally august Times newspaper put her picture on its front page above the caption: "The woman who is sexing up the Lib Dems."

Party leader Nick Clegg said her films were not his "cup of tea" but said she had at least not done anything illegal, a swipe at rival politicians caught up in a long-running scandal over parliamentary expenses.

Arrowsmith, managing director of Easy on the Eye Productions, said her move into politics was a natural diversification after years of campaigning to improve women's rights in the adult film industry.

"I'm hopefully taking the skills I've learned of being a fighter to the national stage at Westminster," she told Reuters.

Despite a matter-of-fact attitude to her subject matter, she has always remained behind the camera.

"You've got to naturally be an exhibitionist and that's not what I am like. Porn stars would walk along the streets nude, that's what they enjoy, that's not me."

(Reporting by Tim Castle, editing by Tim Pearce)

British pair faces jail time in Dubai over kiss...

Reuters

Sun Mar 14, 2010(Reuters) - A British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai face up to a month in jail in the Gulf Arab emirate for indecency after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

The pair, a British man living in Dubai and a female friend, were arrested in November on accusations of kissing and touching each other intimately in public and consuming alcohol, their lawyer said. They were ordered jailed for a month.

The case is the third time in under two years in which Britons have hit the headlines by falling foul of decency laws in Dubai, a flashy Muslim emirate popular with sun-seeking Western tourists and expatriates.

A lawyer for the pair, who launched an appeal on Sunday, said there had been no inappropriate kissing and the two were just friends. A verdict in the appeal is expected on April 4.

"There was no lip kissing. It was just a normal greeting that is not considered offensive," lawyer Khalaf al-Hosani told the court, adding the complainant's testimony was contradictory.

The British man's mother in London said her son, Ayman Najafi, had vowed to clear his name.

"My Ayman is a good boy, he's very wise and mature. I can't believe it," his mother Maida Najafi was quoted as saying in The Independent. "He knows the rules over there. He would never do that. He wouldn't even do it over here."

The pair, free on bail, were also fined 1,000 dirhams ($272) for illegal consumption of alcohol, the lawyer said. They were to be deported after the completion of their jail sentence.

Dubai's foreign population has expanded rapidly in recent years as expatriates flocked to the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub for its tax-free earnings and year-round sunshine.

The changes have challenged the Emirati population, which is now vastly outnumbered by foreigners, raising concern that their emirate's rapid pace of growth is a threat to their social and religious identity in what remains a deeply conservative region.

In a high-profile case in 2008, a British couple narrowly escaped jail after a court found them guilty of engaging in drunken sexual activity out of wedlock, and for doing so in public on a beach in the emirate.

They were sentenced to three months in prison followed by deportation, but had their jail terms overturned on appeal.

In a separate case this year, a British couple who shared a hotel room managed to escape trial in Dubai for having sex out of wedlock by producing a marriage certificate.

A British embassy spokesman said it could confirm that a British national was arrested in November and the mission had provided consular assistance, but gave no further details.

(Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Additional reporting by Tamara Walid; Editing by Charles Dick)

Nurses' union: Care does not include sex...

Reuters

A nurse speaks with an unidentified patient in the hospital in a file photo. Credit: Reuters/Darren Staples

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) Thu Mar 11, 2010 - A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.

The union, NU'91, is calling the campaign "I Draw The Line Here," with an advert that features a young woman covering her face with crossed hands.

The union said in a statement Thursday that the campaign follows a complaint it had received in the last week from a 24-year-old woman who said a 42-year-old disabled man asked her to provide sexual services as part of his care at home.

The young woman witnessed some of the man's other nurses offering him sexual gratification, the union said. When she refused to do the same, he tried to dismiss her on the grounds that she was unfit to provide care.

"This type of action is not part of the job responsibilities of carers and nurses," NU'91 said.

The case has been reported to police, the union added.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz, editing by Paul Taylor)

Police catch man snorting drugs on their car...

Reuters

Tue Mar 2, 2010. BERLIN (Reuters) - German police detained a nightclub reveler they caught trying to snort amphetamines off the top of their unmarked patrol car.

The 26-year-old began lining up the powdered drugs on the roof of the car in a disco car park, when the two police officers surprised him, a Nuremberg police spokesman said on Tuesday.

The man had no idea the normal looking vehicle belonged to the police, and it was coincidence that the officers -- who were walking by their parked car -- discovered him just as he was about to take the drugs.

"He's got horrible luck," said Bert Rauenbusch, police spokesman in the southern German city.

(Reporting by Christopher Lawton, editing by Paul Casciato)

Obesity and depression are a two-way street...

Reuters By Megan Brookes

<--- A man sits on a wall in the Canary Wharf financial district of London, April 1, 2009
Credit: Reuters/Simon Newman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Thu Mar 4, 2010 - People who are obese are at increased risk of becoming depressed, and people who are depressed are at increased risk of becoming obese, Dutch researchers have found.

"There is a reciprocal association over time between depression and obesity," Dr. Floriana S. Luppino, of Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands, told Reuters Health by email.

Obesity, Luppino and colleagues found, increases the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals by 55 percent and depression increases the risk of obesity in initially normal-weight individuals by 58 percent.

Luppino said the analysis was not designed to determine a given person's risk of depression, only to figure out how much obesity increased that risk. However, for comparison, a recent study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health found that nearly one out of four cases of obesity is associated with a mood or anxiety disorder.

These findings, the NIMH notes on its website, appear to support what other studies have found - that obesity, which is on the increase in the US - is associated with increasing rates of depression and other mental health problems.

The new findings stem from pooled data from 15 published studies that looked at whether being overweight or obese is associated with depression, and vice versa.

The studies, which collectively involved more than 58,000 people, used body mass index, or BMI, to gauge how fat or thin a person is. For reference, a US adult with a BMI of 25 or more is considered overweight, while one with a BMI of 30 and above is considered obese.

Being obese, Luppino told Reuters Health, not only increases the risk of depression, but is more likely to fuel the onset of clinical depression, rather than merely depressive symptoms.

In contrast to obesity, the association between depression and being overweight (but not obese) did not run the other way, Luppino noted. Being overweight increased the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals somewhat, but depression did not increase the risk of being overweight over time.

The findings, reported in the latest issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, also suggest that the link between obesity and later depression is more pronounced among Americans than among Europeans.

Why? "A dose-response association -- meaning the higher the BMI, the more people get depressed -- might explain the association," Luppino said. And the average American weighs more than the average European.

However, the effect of the psychological distress should not be neglected, the researcher said. "Overweight and obesity, can induce low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction," Luppino explained, "especially in Western countries where thinness is often considered a beauty ideal. Both low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction are known to increase the risk of depression."

Because both depression and obesity carry "major health implications, it is very important to try to prevent and treat both," Luppino said.

The Dutch team encourages doctors and other health professionals, working in different fields, to collaborate and exchange their expertise. Doctors treating patients who are overweight or obese could screen their patients for depression and vice versa -- psychiatrists or general doctors encountering depressed patients could suggest their overweight patients see a dietitian, Luppino suggests.

SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, March 2010.

Bourne again: Green Zone a remarkable movie | Reuters

Reuters By: Kirk Honeycutt

Fri Mar 5, 2010. LOS ANGELES - In "Green Zone," director Paul Greengrass brings the frenetic, run-and-gun style with which he utterly transformed the movie thriller in the Jason Bourne series to a different kind of thriller, one with a sharper political edge.

For "Green Zone" explores the Bush administration's willingness to embrace palpable lies over murky truths in order to sell the Iraq War to the American public.

Iraq mostly has been a nonstarter at the box office, but this is Matt Damon, Greengrass and the "Bourne" team reunited on another breathless venture into ticking-clock urgency. So Universal should easily overcome that hurdle to rack up considerable theatrical coin in North America and overseas.

Drawing on his years as a British television journalist covering global conflicts for ITV, Greengrass brings a cinema verite style to his thrillers. He makes these movies look as if a guerrilla camera crew has somehow tagged along with a movie's protagonist to catch key moments in an unfolding story as it explodes in the character's face.

In Hitchcock terms, the movie has both a goal and a MacGuffin. The goal is the determination by U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) to discover why his team of inspectors comes up empty every time commanders send them to find chemical weapons in the Iraqi desert. The MacGuffin is a small notebook an Iraqi general grabbed four months earlier as the U.S. invasion began. It contains the addresses of Baathist safe houses in the Baghdad area.

Endangering the lives of his soldiers to hit a target, which Pentagon "intel" has fingered as a storage site for MWDs, and again finding nothing, Miller wants answers. Returning to Baghdad, he encounters three people who could supply them: Defense Intelligence agent Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), CIA station chief Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) and Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan). Miller doesn't like what he hears.

All the intelligence comes from a single source. This source has confirmed Dayne's many stories about Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of MWDs and now pinpoints the sites Miller's team fruitlessly searches. Then Miller runs across an individual who does have accurate information. A local, English-speaking Iraqi who calls himself Freddy (Khalid Abdalla) risks his life to approach Miller to tell him that key Iraqi army figures, all wanted by coalition forces, are meeting in a house nearby.

This proves to be true. But in a firefight, the Iraqi general escapes, leaving behind that notebook. This is briefly in Miller's possession, but then a strange thing happens: A Special Forces unit under Lt. Col. Briggs (Jason Isaacs) abruptly moves in to snatch Miller's prisoners. Miller is forced to slip the notebook to Freddy.

Aren't we all on the same side, Miller wonders? CIA agent Brown cautions him against being naive. It now dawns on Miller that he has stumbled onto a cover-up. The race is on to find the general, who seemingly is the all-knowing source for much of the government's intelligence -- and the reporter's stories. Not everyone wants the general taken alive.

Damon, in motion the entire movie, acts as a magnet, drawing every detail of the story and its character into his orbit. Although there might be a touch of naivete to his character's determination to ferret out the truth, there is a Jimmy Stewart aspect, too. He positively will not let anyone, no matter where he belongs in the chain of command or how far "off the reservation" his character drifts, stand in the way of the truth.

The Brown vs. Poundstone dynamics -- the "dinosaur" CIA veteran and the intelligence agent bringing Neo-Con ideology to the Middle East with little thought for the actual needs of a postwar nation -- represent a dramatic standoff. The journalist, with the ghost of the New York Times' Judith Miller lurking in the background, supplies one key piece of information in the troubling mosaic the protagonist puts together.

Abdalla, operating with a prosthetic leg and a battered old Toyota, represents the modern Arab, who watches in dismay as overconfident Americans try to snatch his rebellion and country away from him.

The movie takes its inspiration from a nonfiction book by former Washington Post Baghdad chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." It's not, strictly speaking, an adaptation because Brian Helgeland's script is fiction. Rather, the book supplies something of a beacon for the filmmakers, guiding them in their interpretation of the folly of ignorance and ambition emanating from inside the Green Zone, a safety area including the old Republican Palace where American decision-makers remain cut off from the Iraqi reality.

Greengrass and his "Bourne" team -- cinematographer Barry Ackroyd worked with him on "United 93" -- do a magnificent job of turning locations in Spain, Morocco and the U.K. into a realistic Iraq, a region tumbled into chaos and devastating destruction to its infrastructure. That chaos tips over into the action of the movie as the film hurtles from one destination to another in a race against time. John Powell's propulsive music eggs the action ever forward, and Christopher Rouse's rapid-fire editing nervously stitches the stunts, chases, fights and confrontations together.

Aussie underwear has gone bananas...

Reuters

Fri Mar 5, 2010 2:11pm SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Australian underwear company AussieBum has been monkeying around and the result is a range of men's underwear made with bananas.

The new eco-friendly banana range of undies incorporates 27 percent banana fiber, 64 percent cotton and 9 percent lycra, AussieBum's Lloyd Jones said on Friday.

The banana fiber used in the underwear is made from a bark weave from the banana plant and makes the underwear not only lightweight, but also very absorbent, he said. "Naturally you can't really add anymore banana fiber than that because it might be a bit squishy," said Jones, adding that wearers did not have to worry about real monkeys, as the underwear does not smell like a banana.

(Reporting by Amy Pyett; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

London stage fright: rats, mice and fleas: survey...

Reuters

LONDON Thu Mar 4, 2010 10:52am ESTLONDON (Reuters) - Performers in London's West End are having to cope with a different kind of stage fright in the form of mice, rat and flea infestations in theatres, according to a new survey by actors' union Equity.

"The findings have shocked even hardened West Enders," the union said in its report, which found that three quarters of actors and stage managers reported regular infestations including mice, rats and fleas.

Equity general secretary Christine Payne said the findings suggested that each night, more than 600 actors and stage managers would go to work knowing they were likely to see and smell vermin, "both living and decomposing," at work.

"I accept that many West End theatres are old and difficult buildings to manage, but this is running out of control," she added. "These appalling conditions must come to an end."

The survey was completed by nearly 350 performers and stage managers in 24 different theatres, many of them featuring world-famous shows.

Individuals surveyed reported that floors had been eaten by mice which also left droppings and unpleasant smells.

"I had tiny bite marks on my lipstick recently when I left the lid off," one respondent said.

(Reporting by Valle Aviles Pinedo; editing by Keith Weir and Mike Collett-White)

HSBC sells $1.5b Kangaroo bond issue...

Telstra BigPond News

Saturday, March 06, 2010. HSBC Holdings Plc has sold $1.5 billion in Australian-dollar denominated 'kangaroo bonds', the largest such issuance in more than two years.

The issuance would include $1 billion of fixed-rate bonds and a further $500 million of floating-rate notes would be unsecured and unsubordinated, HSBC said in a statement on Friday.

The fixed-rate bonds had a coupon of 6.75 per cent and were priced at 1.25 percentage points over the mid swap rate.

The floating bonds were priced at 1.25 percentage points more than the three-month bank bill swap rate.

All the bonds are due to mature in March 2015 and have a AA rating from Standard Poor's and Moody's Investors Service.

'Our objective was to further diversify our investor base with a transaction focused specifically on Australia and the Asia-Pacific region,' HSBC head of senior funding Neil Sankoff said.

Fund managers made up 61 per cent of investors, followed by banks. By geography, Australian investors bought 67 per cent, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore.

The lead managers of the sale were HSBC, together with the ANZ Banking Group Ltd, Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd, National Australia Bank Ltd and Westpac Banking Corp.

Vatican male escort scandal...

Telstra BigPond News

Saturday, March 06, 2010. A singer in the Vatican choir had sex with one of the Pope's gentlemen-in-waiting and procured male escorts on his behalf, the Italian weekly Panorama says.

Telephone intercepts collected as part of an extensive corruption probe into Angelo Balducci showed that 40-year-old Nigerian Chinedu Thomas Ehiem would find men on the 'Pianeta Escort' (Planet Escort) website and set up encounters between them and Balducci in his apartment in Rome, the weekly said on Friday.

In an interview with Panorama, Ehiem said he had sex with Balducci 'for five or six months' because of financial problems.

After a lengthy period without making contact, Balducci then got back in touch with Ehiem, asking him to organise encounters for him via the Internet.

'He asked and I executed. He would give me 50 or 100 euros, never more than 1,000 or 1,500 euros a year,' said Ehiem, adding that for Balducci 'a 26-, 27-year-old man was too young. He preferred meeting mature people - 40 or older.'

The last meeting between Balducci and Ehiem took place in January when Ehiem said he organised an encounter with 'a dark-haired Hungarian in his forties'.

Balducci is part of the Gentlemen of His Holiness, a group that helps the Pope greet dignitaries visiting the Vatican.

He was arrested on February 10 and then removed from his position in the Vatican fraternity.

Ehiem was kicked out of the Vatican choir on Wednesday.

The Catholic Church is currently enmeshed in a scandal over alleged sexual abuse of members of a boy choir formerly headed by Pope Benedict XVI's brother Georg, now 86, in the southern German city of Regensburg.

Getting naked for art at the Sydney Opera House...

Reuters

SYDNEY (Reuters)Mon March 1, 2010 - Some 5,200 Australians posed naked in front of the Sydney Opera House on Monday for a photo shoot by New York-based artist Spencer Tunick for another signature installation of nudes against urban backdrops.

On a chilly, overcast, first day of autumn, the mass nude photo shoot was titled "Mardi Gras: The Base" and meant to celebrate Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras last weekend.

As the sun rose, Tunick instructed participants to do a number of poses, from standing up, lying down, and even embracing cheek to cheek, for over an hour.

"I want all couples to embrace and kiss, all friends to kiss and all strangers to do whatever they want," Tunick said as he directed the crowd.

Some participants were surprised at how asexual, and leveling, the event was.

"I thought it could be a bit awkward, but it's funny because when you're naked and everybody else is naked, you feel like you're dressed, because everybody looks the same," said Steven Anglier, who wore a wig so he could stand out in the photo.

"It's really a weird experience because you think there could be something sexual behind, but there's not."

Tunick has produced almost 100 installations around the world, and says his work is not about exhibitionism or eroticism but instead reveals the vulnerability of life in a rough city landscape.

But that argument has not impressed authorities at home in the United States, where Tunick has been arrested seven times.

His largest installation was in Mexico on May 6, 2007, where he photographed 18,000 people In Mexico city's Zocalo Square.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Miral Fahmy